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This book is an anthology with a difference. It presents a distinctive variety of Anglo-Norman works, beginning in the twelfth century and ending in the nineteenth, covering a broad range of genres and writers, introduced in a lively and thought-provoking way. Facing-page translations, into accessible and engaging modern English, are provided throughout, bringing these texts to life for a contemporary audience.

The collection offers a selection of fascinating passages, and whole texts, many of which are not anthologised or translated anywhere else. It explores little-known byways of Arthurian legend and stories of real-life crime and punishment; women’s voices tell history, write letters, berate pagans; advice is offered on how to win friends and influence people, how to cure people’s ailments and how to keep clear of the law; and stories from the Bible are retold with commentary, together with guidance on prayer and confession.

Each text is introduced and elucidated with notes and full references, and the material is divided into three main sections: Story (a variety of narrative forms), Miscellany (including letters, law and medicine, and other non-fiction), and Religious (saints' lives, sermons, Bible commentary, and prayers). Passages in one genre have been chosen so as to reflect themes or stories that appear in another, so that the book can be enjoyed as a collection or used as a resource to dip into for selected texts.

This anthology is essential reading for students and scholars of Anglo-Norman and medieval literature and culture. Wide-ranging and fully referenced, it can be used as a springboard for further study or relished in its own right by readers interested to discover Anglo-Norman literature that was written to amuse, instruct, entertain, or admonish medieval audiences.

Jane Bliss is a medievalist, free-lance writer and occasional teacher. Her publications to date include Naming and Namelessness in Medieval Romance (2008), La Vie d'Edouard le Confesseur by a Nun of Barking (2015), and Cher Alme: Texts of Anglo-Norman Piety (with Tony Hunt and Henrietta Leyser; 2010); as well as a number of articles on medieval literature and history. She also helps to convene the Oxford Anglo-Norman Reading Group. She lives in Oxford with a mathematician, a large number of musical instruments, and two cats.

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for non-commercial purposes; to remix, transform and build upon the material providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that she endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: